OFF THE MAP is a blog about maps by mapmaker Connie Brown. When she isn't painting commissioned maps, she entertains Deep Thoughts about the intersections of cartography with the absurdity of life, the Treaty of Tordasillas, the classrom, monsters & putti, Jasper Johns and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Off the Map

Last Friday morning September 18th, eight women (just happened to be one gender this time!) arrived for three days of intense manuscript map painting. They came from California, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, and Connecticut–all advanced students, with cartography experience gained at previous workshops here or in other contexts. Hazel Jarvis–talented painter, mapmaker, and art instructor–taught with me on Saturday and Sunday. As a bonus, Elizabeth Porcher Jones, a workshop attendee and phenomenal calligrapher, demonstrated her art for us yesterday. Watching her form letters in her exquisite hand, all of us were transfixed. She often combines cartography with calligraphy:

Hazel and I did a little formal teaching, but mostly we acted as map-making midwives as attendees composed and then began to execute their projects– All hands were busy:

Workshop maps varied from student to student: an environmental anthropologist mapped her family’s Irish heritage; the calligrapher mapped a camp her son had attended; an eclipse-chaser mapped a lunar eclipse she witnessed in Niger; a graphic artist mapped her family’s migration from China to Cuba, Guatamala, and the United States; a linguist mapped two childhood years her family lived in Penang; a neuroscientist mapped a recent hiking trip in the Dolomites; the Californian mapped her very favorite and her least favorite restaurants in LA in saturated 1950’s design style; and a master gardener (also the only townie in the group–she lives down the street from me) commemorated her brother’s beautifully restored Victorian house in the context of its neighborhood.

Mapmakers need sustenance, of course, and breaks from the studio. We ate and drank and enjoyed sunny September warmth:

Nobody finished her map in three days: these are complex and ambitious projects, and I don’t expect to see final results for some time. Hand-painted maps take hours: maybe that bucks current trends, but there’s great value in endeavors that blossom over time, and great pleasure in performing each step with care. Hazel and I hope we gave them enough guidance to continue on their own–with recourse, if they need it, to the Redstone Studios 24-hour Cartographic Hotline. I usually correspond with my students long after our weekend together. For us and for them, there’s value in the journey. Part of the mapmaking journey is our shared interest in maps and, invariably, in each other’s lives and interests. We make maps here, but we also form friendships and support each other’s creativity and visions. It’s just three days, but it’s three days carved out of busy lives for a rarefied purpose.

A few years ago, Jon Lindseth–Lewis Carroll scholar, collector, and curator–commissioned a black-and-white map of the world showing locations of the 174 languages and dialects into which Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been translated. He planned to use it as the endpapers for a 3-volume work entitled Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece, of which he was General Editor. The original map (ink and acrylic wash on canvas) is 53″ wide; in endpaper form, it is 15.50″ wide.

The map provided me not only the opportunity to use Victorian typefaces & border designs, but also the privilege of paying homage to Sir John Tenniel’s iconic illustrations:

Not surprisingly, Western Europe bristles with toponyms, so I designed an inset map to enlarge the region. Here, Alice gives it the once-over:

Another detail:

The book’s 2015 publication date intentionally coincides with Alice150, a world-wide celebration of the 150th anniversary of Carroll’s great work. Besides the book, Lindseth curated an exhibit at New York City’s Grolier Club featuring the Alice translations, the original of this map, and three other maps of mine (these full color) commissioned especially for the show. Last night I attended the opening; I was proud to be part of the project, and eager to see the translated works. If you’ve never been to the Grolier Club, make a trip: it’s a beautiful building with a spectacular exhibit space (free and open to the public!). For bibliophiles, Lewis Carroll aficionados, and maybe even map-lovers, the show, which runs until November 21st, is a must-see. Exhibit info here.

Whoever wishes to know the true shape of the world, their minds shall be filled with light and their breast with joy. Hadji Ahmed

I have an amazing line-up of attendees coming to my three-day advanced workshop next weekend. For those who are alumni of my workshops, so it’ll be a reunion–and the newbies will quickly be enfolded. Everyone is knowledgeable and accomplished: although I’m technically the map teacher, I’m more a map midwife here. At this level, the workshop functions as a design lab, a place for artist-cartographers (this year, exclusively ladies–“Sheographers,” as my friend Wendy Brawer says) to exchange ideas, inspiration, and friendship. To enhance the experience, I’ve engaged Hazel Jarvis, talented artist and educator, to teach with me–she’s also a mapmaking workshop alum! I can’t wait to see these projects blossom.

One of the returning attendees is Californian Rhonda Dibachi. Last year in the workshop, she started an elaborate map, a re-imagination of Turkish cartographer Hadji Ahmed’s famous 16th century woodblock work entitled A Complete and Perfect Map Describing the Whole World. This cordiform (heart-shaped) map is a beautiful amalgam of Ottoman and European styles and cartographic knowledge. Though produced in Venice, it was probably intended for a Muslim market, since the text is in Turkish. Here it is in one of its incarnations (this, actually is a French copy from the 19th century, but it works best for our context; see why I choose it instead of the original woodblock):

She’s updated the world to reflect current geography (I was worried about that challenge, but she was all over it) and turned it into a map about her life with her Iranian husband, showing where each was born and the places where they’ve lived. The title, in Farsi, translates thus: A Complete and Accurate Map of the World of Farzad and Rhonda Dibachi. Hidden in the winds are the names of companies where they’ve worked and/or have founded. Says Rhonda, “I imagine that these were the winds of change that have figured heavily in our destiny.” The highlighted constellations in the celestial maps feature their astrological signs, along with their son’s sign. Note her trompe l’oeil touch: the map looks like it was made it pieces, then improperly joined, a clever echo of the earlier map. So as not to discourage fledglings, know that she did not finish the map in the course of last year’s three day workshop; she worked on it over the year.

Adapting an existing and venerable map is a particular cartographic and aesthetic journey. Among my students, Rhonda is unusual in having followed this path. Though it is just one path among many, it’s an amazing and revelatory educational experience–I recommend that every mapmaker follow it at least once. I do it myself: sometimes a client asks me to create a map in the style of a particular historic map or mapmaker. I love it–it appeals to my scholarly nature; beyond that, however, I learn techniques I might not have learned otherwise. It’s great to apprentice and submit oneself to the masters.

In addition to the autumn introductory and advanced workshops I’m teaching in my Durham studio, I’m teaching a three-day introductory workshop at the renownedOsher Map Library in Portland, Maine, from Friday, June 5th through Sunday, June 7th. I’m excited about this: we’ll have the Osher’s collection of original maps to inspire and instruct us. For further inspiration, there’s a timely map exhibit on:Women in Cartography, curated by the legendary Alice Hudson and including, I’m proud to say, my map of the Hudson and its watershed. After workshop hours, we can explore the wonderful and happening city of Portland–great restaurants, art everywhere, and beautiful views of the Atlantic. For information about the workshop itself, contact me: connie@redstonestudios.com or (860) 575 4640. For information about about the Osher Map Library, contact Heather Magaw: hmagaw@usm.maine.edu. Register here.

Three-day Introductory Workshop, Friday, September 11th through Sunday, September 13: In the course of three days, you’ll work on a simple map, and in the process, learn techniques you can build on for the rest of your cartographic life. I’ll teach you how to locate the right mapping sources for your project, to employ those sources for your own purposes, to incorporate design and color into your maps, and to use various media. We’ll examine design styles, exploring the best design vocabulary for your particular purpose. I’ll give you all the measuring tips, methods, and short-cuts I’ve developed over the years. If you haven’t been bitten by the cartography bug before you start, I’m pretty sure you’ll be a convert by the end of the workshop. You’ll leave with the tools you need to map trips, personal histories or heritage, properties, or causes—for yourself, for your organization, or for your family and friends. You don’t have to be an artist to make a handsome and meaningful map: all you need is motivation, an interest in mapmaking, and the nerve to apply pencil to paper.

The workshop fee is $650, which includes–besides instruction–all the materials and tools you’ll need. During the summer, I’ll send you information and homework (yes, homework: I want you to arrive here with a particular plan and focus for your project). Also included in your fee is continental breakfast and lunch daily, along with wine and cheese to close Friday and Saturday’s sessions. The workshop is limited to nine attendees, which insures lots of attention from me, elbow room in the studio, and camaraderie with your fellow mapmakers.

The workshop does not include accommodations or transportation. I live in a little town with no hotels, but in the Connecticut River Valley and along the Connecticut shore are many hotels and B & B’s, ranging from standard-issue hotel chains to luxurious little inns. Depending upon your preference, you’ll stay anywhere from ten minutes away to a half-hour: I’ll send a list when you sign up. This is gorgeous leaf-peeping season, a popular time to visit New England, so don’t tarry in making your plans. If you’re flying to CT for the workshop, here are the airports with distances from my studio: Bradley (BDL), 35 miles; Westchester (NY) County Airport (HPN), 71 miles; T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, RI (PVD), 91 miles; La Guardia Airport in New York (LGA) & Kennedy in New York (JFK), 100 miles; and Logan Airport in Boston (BOS), 124 miles. And of course, if you fly, you’ll need to rent a car (Note: if you’re choosing among metropolitan airports, know that I much prefer Logan to Kennedy or La Guardia: Logan is less congested, and the drive from Boston to Durham is less annoying than is the drive from NYC to Durham).

Autumn in Connecticut is beautiful, so you might want to spend a couple of extra days exploring, hiking, or visiting our wonderful historical sites and museums: more on these anon.

The hitch: As I said, the workshop is limited to nine attendees. First come, first served. You’re required to send a $150 deposit when you sign up; the balance is due August 15th. To sign up or make inquiries, call (860 575 4640) or e-mail me at connie@redstonestudios.com.

Three-day Advanced Mapmaking Workshop, Friday, September 18th through Sunday, September 20th: If you’ve attended one of my workshops, or if you’re an experienced mapmaker, this workshop is open to you. Unlike neophytes, you understand how to approach a map project: you’ve begun to understand the factors involved in designing a map, and you know the importance of clarity and focus. Then there’s the fun stuff: design vocabulary, palette, and art medium. Unlike the introductory workshop, in which I prescribe the parameters of your project, this workshop allows you to make any kind of map you want (travel map, property map, biographical map, genealogical map, imaginary map, memory map, stewardship map) in the medium of your choice (within my area of expertise, that is!). Hazel Jarvis and I will be your hovercraft advisors, moving from student to student, giving a few demonstrations here and there. I can’t promise you’ll finish, especially if your aim is ambitious, but you’ll leave with your map well-launched, equipped with the tools and techniques.

Like the introductory workshop attendees, you’ll have summer homework: by August 15th, you’ll report to me your cartographic subject, your theme, the data you plan to use, and the medium you have in mind. You and I will talk (or e-mail) about the project and do some preliminary problem solving. Having prepared ahead, you’ll make the best use of your three days in the studio.

The workshop fee is $650. This fee includes–besides instruction, of course—all the tools and supplies you’ll need (If you’re a returning alumnus of last year’s advanced workshop and you still have the art supplies I provided you, let me know: I’ll reduce your fee accordingly). Beyond cartography, your fee includes a continental breakfast and lunch each day–and wine and cheese to close Friday and Saturday’s sessions. The workshop is limited to nine attendees, which insures elbow room, lots of personal attention from Hazel and me, and opportunities for camaraderie.

The workshop does not include accommodations or transportation. I live in a little town with no hotels, but in the Connecticut River Valley and along the Connecticut shore are many hotels and B & B’s, ranging from standard-issue hotel chains to luxurious little inns. Depending upon your preference, you’ll stay anywhere from ten minutes away to a half-hour: I’ll send a list when you sign up. This is gorgeous leaf-peeping season, so don’t tarry. If you’re flying to CT for the workshop, here are the airports with distances from my studio: Bradley (BDL), 35 miles; Westchester (NY) County Airport (HPN), 71 miles; T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, RI (PVD), 91 miles; La Guardia Airport in New York (LGA), Kennedy in New York (JFK), 100 miles; and Logan Airport in Boston (BOS), 124 miles. And of course, if you fly, you’ll need to rent a car (Note: if you’re choosing among metropolitan airports, know that I much prefer Logan to Kennedy or La Guardia: Logan is less congested, and the drive from Boston to Durham is less annoying than is the drive from NYC to Durham).

Autumn in Connecticut is beautiful, so you might want to spend a couple of extra days exploring, hiking, or visiting our wonderful historical sites and museums: more on these anon.

The hitch: As I said, the workshop is limited to nine attendees. First come, first served. You’re required to send a $150 deposit when you sign up; the balance, like your homework, is due August 15th. . To sign up or make inquiries, call (860 575 4640) or e-mail me at connie@redstonestudios.com.

In October 2013, I ran a three-day map workshop (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) here in my Connecticut studio for ten students. They came from various places: California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York City, and Connecticut. A couple of them are seasoned artists, and one curates a major university map collection, but none of them had much map-making experience before the workshop. By the time they left on Sunday afternoon, everyone had either finished or nearly finished a map. That doesn’t begin to describe the experience, however. As the instructor, I had prepared diligently for the workshop; furthermore, I’d drafted the help of my studio colleague John Darnell and my husband Duncan Milne, who is an artist and an architect and a great mapmaker himself. Our efforts paid off, I think. But there was another, truly magical, reason the workshop was so successful–namely, the camaraderie that arose among everyone. Together, we laughed, encouraged one another, wined and dined, shared our interests. In this atmosphere, everyone felt inspired and comfortable. Our attendees were ten great people, but I’m bold and optimistic enough to think that any ten people bound by this cartographic goal will create this same atmosphere.

In the next couple of posts, I’ll share student comments and some of their maps.

Meanwhile, on to my 2014 workshops. This autumn, I’m holding two: an introductory workshop from Friday, September 12th through Sunday, September 14th, and an advanced workshop from Friday, October 3rd through Sunday, October 3rd. Here ‘s basic info.

Three-day Introductory Mapmaking Workshop, Friday, September 12 through Sunday, September 14: If you want to master the art of manuscript mapmaking (maps made by hand, that is), come to this workshop, held in my Durham, CT studio, and learn all my deep cartographic secrets. At the same time, experience an autumn weekend in the beautiful Connecticut River Valley, establish camaraderie with fellow attendees, and enjoy country fare: breakfast, lunch and day’s-end wine and cheese. Limited to ten students. Last year’s workshop filled quickly—act now! Workshop fee: $600 (includes art/cartography supplies), $550 if you book by April 1st. To reserve a place or ask questions, e-mail or call me:connie@redstonestudios.com; 860 575 4640.

Three-day Advanced Mapmaking Workshop: Friday, Oct 3 through Sunday, October 5: Advanced three-day manuscript map workshop in my studio, open to veterans of last year’s introductory workshop, and to experienced mapmakers as well. No set curriculum for this workshop: choose your own cartographic adventure! Also featured: autumn in Connecticut, fortifying fare, and camaraderie. Workshop fee: $600 (includes art/cartography supplies, in this case geared to individual goals), $550 if you book by April 1st. To reserve a place or ask questions, e-mail or call me: connie@redstonestudios.com; 860 575 4640.

As I said in my first Anatomy of a Map post, each commission carries with it a happy surprise. Here’s the happy surprise in this project: my client Anne Armfield turns out to be an amazing nature photographer. Clients often take photos on their trips–we all do, right? Especially now that digital cameras and phones allow us to take lots of pictures. And most clients take good photos, good enough for me to use as the basis for map illustrations. Anne’s photos, however, took my breath away: they’re extraordinarily beautiful. I mean, look at these zebras! I marveled at the 190 shots she sent, wondering how we were going to choose just a few candidates for the map.

We managed, Anne and I, to make choices–after that, however, I was on my own, pretty anxious about my ability to do these images justice. Above are my painted zebras–pretty decent, less splendid than their models. It was an honor and a challenge to work with this gifted artist. I’ve kept Anne’s photos on my computer: sometimes when I need a break and a shot of inspiration, I look at them. In the next few posts, I’ll treat you to more examples of her work.

Raise your hands if you want to make letters like this. Such a pleasurable pastime, if you like that sort of thing. This is from the title page of Literarum latinarum (1541), a treatise on the Italic hand written by the famous map-and-globe maker Gerard Mercator, and here’s the text, translated from the Latin: “How to write the Latin letters which they call italic or cursive.” Mercator provides page after page of instruction, available to us (well, maybe–it’s out of print) in facsimile with an English translation by A.S. Osley. I happened upon this facsimile volume in a used bookstore in Blue Hill, ME; it’s an excellent and beautiful handbook. Below is Chancery, a modern, more streamlined version of Renaissance italic:

Sometimes I use a combination of Chancery and Mercator’s italic, saving the really fancy Mercator capital letters for water place names. I used both in Anne’s map, but for the Roman upper and lower case lettering and for the numbers, I used–as I mentioned last time–Bell Roman, one of my favorites. Here it is, from Jan Tschichold’s classic Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering:

Isn’t it beautiful? Look at the numbers, especially that delicious 2. And the ampersand–oh, all the gorgeous ampersand styles! These are easy to master if you’re hand-lettering: just make plain letters and add the thicknesses & serifs & flourishes that characterize the style. Practice a little, and you’ll get the hang of it. Mercator’s italic, Chancery, and Bell Roman are just three, the three I happened to use for this project. There’s a whole world of historic and contemporary lettering styles and fonts, each with its own history.

Here’s a detail from the commercial map of East Africa which Anne annotated for me: the circled numbers refer to a list of locations she compiled. You can see that the numbers are heavily concentrated; if I wrote the corresponding place names right on the canvas, they might render the map a “nomenclatural gray” (I borrow this term from Denis Wood and John Fels’ excellent book The Natures of Maps, published in 2008 by the University of Chicago Press). Instead, I decide to follow Anne’s example by providing a key:

I’ve “superimposed” this list on a part of the map that bears no significance to Anne’s purpose–in fact, I enlarged the scope of the map’s field to include elements like this list. Of course there is no actual map underneath the list of names: this is a bit of mild trompe l’oeil.I like the faux parchment look–having seen it in antique maps, I frequently appropriate it for my purposes. Looking at the map, you’ll see that aside from the red numbers (every map needs a touch of red!), I’ve only included enough general place names to provide context. I have one purpose here, and that is to show my client’s East Africa. There is no Board of Map Correctness hovering over me.

Now look at the lettering styles, both on the map and in the list of place names. For every project, I ponder which lettering styles would work best. Lettering casts a particular spell and contributes greatly (though quietly) to the look and mood of the map. Obviously, the names and numbers have to be legible. But they have to be graceful and consistent with the design style I’ve chosen for the map. Here I’ve used Bell, a slightly old fashioned Roman lettering, along with Bell’s distinctive numbers (each lettering style, in fact, comes with its own numbers). For the country headings in the faux parchment list, I’ve used Chancery, an updated version of a 16th century lettering style. And I’ve busted out elaborate Renaissance lettering for the Indian Ocean. Obviously I’m a big ole map design nerd, but I bet you, too, would enjoy forming these letters and numbers. We’re the species that invented writing (and alphabets): it’s in our blood.